BlackBerry’s DTEK70/Mercury leaks out in two new images

BlackBerry’s DTEK70 – potentially the last handset the ailing firm will oversee the production of – has leaked out in two new images.

At Bandwidth Blog HQ, we’ve given up trying to predict the end of BlackBerry. First, we thought that the Priv was a sign of the end-times, and then that extended to the entry level DTEK50. With the recent release of the DTEK60, we’d all but given up hope – but now it seems that we might have the DTEK70 in our hands before long.

As we wrote earlier this year, the DTEK70 makes up the final portion of a smartphone trilogy codenamed Neon, Argon, and Mercury that would follow the BlackBerry Priv. Why the Canadian company has decided to ditch such overwhelmingly cool nicknames in favour of drab designations we’ll never know, but the reveal of the DTEK70 – or ‘Mercury’ – is now supposedly on the cards.

The DTEK70 is reportedly the last phone BlackBerry will oversee the production of; previously, it handed Alcatel (TCL Communications) the responsibility of producing the DTEK50 and DTEK60, both of which were essentially re-drafted variants of the French company’s Idol handsets.

The DTEK70, then, is a minor departure point – introducing a revised design language reminiscent of both the older BlackBerry Classic and the BlackBerry Priv.

The device will reportedly have a non-slideout keyboard and a 4.5″ screen that will be complemented by a Snapdragon 625 SoC, 3GB of RAM, and an 18-megapixel primary camera and an 8-megapixel selfie snapper.

It remains to be seen whether BlackBerry will continue to contest the Android arena considering that the firm has doubled down on hardware and has begun offering some of its software in premium subscription packages.